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alphadogg writes "In 2010, the Software and Information Industry Association received 157 reports of alleged corporate end user software piracy. Of the 157 reports, 42 (or 27%) were judged sufficiently reliable to pursue. Of these, 16 qualified for rewards totaling $57,500. The profile of sources reporting software piracy indicates that most reports come from former IT staff – these are the people who typically witness the illegal use of software. 75% of all reports come from IT staff or managers, 11% from the company's senior management and 4% from outside consultants. More than 59% of those reporting are no longer employed by the target company. In fact, many of SIIA's sources report that their primary reason for leaving the target company was the company's lack of ethical behavior related to software compliance."

Companies that engage in the unethical behavior, or encourage their employees to be complicit without concern shouldn't be surprised when that behavior is taken against employees results in revenge via the money factor.

Of all the companies I've worked for, the largest ones kept a relative control on software piracy, however not everyone engages in ethical actions.

For example a call center outsourcer, the management tried to steal software written by an employee, and when the employee refused, he quit an

But I can tell you with absolute certainty that past a certain point, large companies don't keep track of individual licenses, they just buy bulk site licenses (not physical copies) and some IT staff ignore the license (much like everyone ignores license agreements) and are only aware of software that they can audit. This results devices like laptops not being accounted, and when staff are fired/quit they don't "return the license." So in some cases the IT staff actually are over-purchasing licenses for software just so they don't have to deal with the BSA.

I'll tell you why that is, because I was tasked with keeping my former employer up to snuff with their licensing.

It is virtually impossible to get everything perfect. You'd think it was simple - if it's a commercial piece of software, one license per user.

Nope.

Let's start with Windows. We'll assume that your company has been making do with fairly elderly PCs for some time, but has since come into money and is taking the opportunity to replace every PC with new hardware running Windows 7. And, in order t

Now, I'm no lawyer, but that sounds to me an awful lot like you can't simply say "We're running Linux on these 50 desktops, so we're not counting them.

Sounds to me like you can. What are they going to do, sue you for not having a license on a computer where you use none of their software? Yea, thats going to hold up REAL well.

Looks more like MS is pretending PC=Windows, and conveniently ignoring the fact that Linux desktop distros exist.

There's a couple of issues with that, which is why it doesn't tend to get tested in practise.

Certainly in the UK, there's very little legal protection to stop a business signing a contract that makes no sense and that contract being enforceable. Microsoft are offering a contract which says in essence "you license this for every PC, whether you use it or not" and there's a real risk it could stand up. AFAIK, the legal system doesn't really take much account of the fact that most businesses have precisely z

Maybe there could be some arguing about the definition of a "PC". From the wording, ti makes it clear that it is the number of computer running windows that is to be considered. I am pretty sure that one could argue that "linux computer" != "PC as defined in the Microsoft contract"

There are so many things wrong with your post, Im not actually sure youve ever had to deal with MS licensing - my experience (mid-sized corporation of about 120 desks, up to a year or so ago) is completely in contrast to yours.

I had no problems at all getting an Open Value license agreement for my initial 10 Windows licenses with SA, and these were full, complete and perpetual licenses - at no time was I offered "upgrade only" or limited time licenses. I paid about £45 per license, plus £4 f

Many years ago I worked for a small startup that pirated pretty much every piece of software we used. This wasn't light piracy of not keeping track of licenses or something of that nature. People there had literally had downloaded programs like Word and Photoshop from warez sites. As a startup, we were broke and felt somewhat justified in not being able to afford software.

Eventually we were acquired by a mid-sized company (maybe 500 employees or so) that was reasonably profitable. When my boss went to ask f

Hardly matters, IMO. When you're a crooked employer, you better take better care of your employers than the competition does. Giving someone a powerful weapon that they can use against you, then dumping on that someone, is just plain stupid.

When you're a crooked employer, you better take better care of your employers than the competition does

So your advice for jobseekers would be to find a crook and work for him, because you'll be better looked after?

Hardly. By "you better take better care", the GP is obviously saying that you 'should' take better care. Nowhere does the GP state that they 'will' take better care. People who are ethical in one area, in my experience, are more likely to be ethical in other areas. All things being equal, even from a pure self-interest point of view, I would rather work with an employer who doesn't defraud software companies.

Employee: Crap, I'm going to be over budget this year. I won't get my bonus. I know, I'll just pirate this expensive instead of paying for it. It's not like they ever audit licenses around here anyway. As long as everything works, the bosses are happy.

Boss: Sorry, you've been doing a great job, but we're downsizing you. Naturally we're doing this just before we have to pay bonuses.

Employee: Well, at least I can make a few bucks reporting these guys to the BSA. It's what they get for

Consider that honesty is mostly not something that people turn on and off depending on the situation. Management that requires IT staff to pirate software is management that's likely to screw staff over other things as well.

My general experience is that an overwhelming majority of people does indeed treat ethics and values as something that's important except when inconvenient. I know a few people with very strong ethics who are willing to swallow the disadvantages, but they seem more the exception than the rule.

I agree with you for the most part, but I worked at a place where we were not even close to being compliant on licensing. Those handling the money were told...but hey! We already HAD Microsoft Office on every computer. Why should we buy it again? We went as far to take MS Office off a bunch of computers and going with...Star Office I believe it was. Our supervisor went to battle over that and lost. We were told to put MS Office back on the computers. During the ordeal a lot of employees outside of IT

Some people would NEVER think about some commercial software if they couldn't pirate them...

Think about these many kids toying with programs like 3DStudio, Adobe Photoshop,... Their budget is near to zero but they are learning to use these tools using pirated versions... The alternative is they playing with Gimp, Blender3D,... Which would lead to more people interrested in these softwares which would greatly benefit to the FOSS.

Well, I didn't say that Blender or The Gimp were complete replacements for commercial application... There are still a lot of functionnalities missing...

But a child or student who use it "for fun" instead of using a pirated copy of Photoshop/Lightwave/Maya/... would learn to use them...

Many commercial software are closing their eyes on piracy because it means that more people learn to use their tools and, when they'll have to use them for commercial purpose, they'll have to pay... It's somehow a two speed h

I always wonder why The GIMP is listed as a viable alternative to Photoshop, given its awful interface, when the respectable and free (tho not FOSS) Paint.NET is overlooked. I really dont see why FOSS vs free would matter in the least to a business or burgeoning graphics artist, especially when the alternative is piracy.

Shut up! Seriously, shut up. Gimp functionality is on par with everything useful that is in Photoshop, and was for quite a while. If you see it as an equivalent of Paint.NET, it means that you have not done with it anything other than clicking on big buttons in tools menu.

A tidal wave of software inspections and lawsuits would certainly accompany a tidal wave of open source interest. The only times I ever heard anyone seriously considering switching over to Linux was when they just couldn't pay for Windows, and running unlicensed was not an option. I have removed Linux many times and replaced it with unlicensed.

1. A thief is a person who removes something of value for his own personal gain (either to use or sell for money).
2. A whistleblower is a person who highlights inethical practices of otherwise unchecked entities without personal gain.
3. A snitch on the other hand sells out his peers for a small reward, which is exactly what is happening here...

Like you said everyone has something to hide and you should respect their privacy by letting them. This should only be violated for highly unethical practices that greatly affect people's lives, like whistleblowers do... These people are heroes who think of the greater good before thinking of themselves, they may be in low esteem from corporations but they are heroes to the common man. Snitches on the other hand are the scum of the earth who violate peoples privacy for mundane things like software piracy and get paid for it too... everyone rightfully hates a snitch because their actions are more unethical than the supposedly unethical things they snitch on. A whistleblower understands this equation of ethics and is on the right side of ethical behavior, a snitch only thinks of personal needs and grievances and does not take ethics into account until after the fact when it might be a good argument to hide their motives...

It isn't as though piracy in every company will be the same. So suppose that you work for a company and piracy is widespread, they don't pay for any of their apps. This includes apps by small developers, for who the couple thousand licenses would be a major, major sale. You go and talk to management about it and get told "You'll keep your mouth shut if you know what is good for you."

In that case, I'd say you are quite justified going to an anti-piracy group, even if they do offer a reward. After all you tried to deal with the problem internally and couldn't, and the company is just ripping off others for their own gain.

Now on the other hand if you work at a company where most software is licensed. You occasionally find some unlicensed stuff, but it is clearly not the norm or the policy. Things like users installing their own stuff because there are poor IT policies, or a group pirating something they need to do their job because their supervisor is incompetent. Management is clearly unaware of this, and you never bring it to their attention.

In that case ya I'll call you a money grubbing asshole if you go to an anti-piracy group. After all it is entirely possible that the situation would be rectified if brought to someone's attention and if you don't want to do that for risk of retribution, just let it go, it isn't a big deal.

Snitches on the other hand are the scum of the earth who violate peoples privacy for mundane things like software piracy and get paid for it too...

You think its mundane. A company selling software could be out of pocket by a lot of money, though. And bringing privacy into this... We're not talking knowing what some individual you wrote in a personal email or what websites they visited. We're talking about whether a company paid for the software licences or not. I don't believe you can't see the difference between those two categories of information.

The difference between a whistleblower and a snitch is the reason they report illegal behavior. A whistleblower does it because it's the ethical thing to do. A snitch does it because he got into trouble and is trying to save his own ass or cut a deal.

If your boss is using some software without proper license, it's just not worth it to be a snitch.

On the other hand, if your boss is dumping toxic chemicals into the water supply, is torturing people, or lying about weapons of mass destruction in order to start a war, it's definitely worth it to be a whistleblower.

On the other hand, if your boss is dumping toxic chemicals into the water supply, is torturing people, or lying about weapons of mass destruction in order to start a war, it's definitely worth it to be a whistleblower.

Becoming associated with whistleblowing about torture and WMD lying? As Lenny Kravitz would say, "I wonder if I'll ever see you again".;)

Just kidding. I'm not diminishing the value of revealing important information, just noting the need for anonymity to avoid turning the whistleblower into a martyr.

Oh, I dunno. I worked for this place once where they had an OSHA violation that was actually causing me to be ill. I asked them to fix it, and said that I wouldn't care except that I was getting headaches. They fired me the next day. Guess what I did? That's right, that day I got home and the first thing I did is call OSHA and report them for violations, and explain I'd been fired for mentioning it to my superiors. They got in some deep shit over that.

Or, how many can actually get another job?
Two things you never want to be associated with:
1. Thief.
2. Whistleblower.

I haven't read TFA but I wouldn't be surprised if you could rat out your (former) employer while keeping your name out of it: the BSA or whatever is going to do a raid to collect the evidence.

Personally I was quite surprised when I realised that my former employer had pirated virtually all their business software. At least that explained the crappy quality of the manuals. If I'd ratted them out after I quit (there were plenty of reasons, but not as a protest against software piracy) they probably would h

Ok, maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly do they find out that you're a whistleblower? It's not like you put that on your resume, or tell them in the interview.Now, of course, if they call your former employers, they might tell them, but remember, if they do, you can sue them. There's a reason that most companies now will NOT say anything about former employees except 1) dates of employment, and 2) eligibility to rehire (yes/no). You can easily find out if a former employer is trash-talking you t

RTFA, those are two different categories of collections. $40k is from 1400 demand letters, not from the 42 of 157 reports that they pursued. According to TFA, they collected $200k from one client alone, and they don't say how much they collected in total.

They either need to increase there notion of "sufficiently reliable", because there false-positive rate is to high, OR: there use Hollywood accounting that makes many positive samples fail to qualified for rewards.
In any case, there is a 26/42 = 62% chance that the actual reward is $0, instead of the $3,593.75.

They're not exactly the most ethical types, so I wouldn't expect them to actually be honest with the techs that turn in companies either. Go read their terms, it's rather a complicated "contract", seems to have quite a few holes.
https://reporting.bsa.org/usa/report/add.aspx [bsa.org]?

But when asked the question during an interview. "Why did you leave you last organization?" Answer "Oh I turned them in for a few thousand dollars."

That is a career limiting move.

Yah it's wrong but it's true.

Then there is the industry. Only coughing up $57,000 grand total. That's not even an IT persons full time salary for a year. The reward or even stigma of the reward is doing more damage to personal lives than the good of correcting the poor behavior of companies. I'm sure MS has paid more for a poster about piracy than it paid out to people doing the right thing.

"As a professional software developer, I wasn't prepared to stand by and watch other professional software developers suffer as a result of crimes carried out by my previous employer, nor did I want to participate in the aiding and abetting of criminals just because they're paying me.

Stigma? Please! Only a company which commits illegal acts would have a problem with this.

Only a company which commits illegal acts would have a problem with this

Every company commits illegal acts. The nature of our legal system is that it's impossible to go through a normal day without breaking a few dozen laws. This is especially true of copyright infringement. Are you 100% certain that every piece of software in your company is licensed? No one has kept WinZIP installed past the shareware period? No one has copied a program from another machine without checking the licensing? The Windows installs are all on the corporate license key and not OEM versions?

So, no one in your company has ever given someone they're working with a copy of the program binary and forgotten to include the source or a written offer for the source? That's probably the easiest way to violate the GPL, but there are a great many others and once you violate the GPL, you no longer have permission to duplicate the code, so the next machine that you install it on is illegal.

Only a company which commits illegal acts would have a problem with this

Every company commits illegal acts. The nature of our legal system is that it's impossible to go through a normal day without breaking a few dozen laws. This is especially true of copyright infringement. Are you 100% certain that every piece of software in your company is licensed? No one has kept WinZIP installed past the shareware period? No one has copied a program from another machine without checking the licensing? The Windows installs are all on the corporate license key and not OEM versions?

That's not sufficient. Apparently you need the reciepts, proof of purchase. If you have all your CD's, stickers on the computers, serials installed correctly, software passes the audit, etc, but no reciepts, it seems you're still liable for piracy.

You can basically assume that some sort of copy violation is taking place. Whether it be systemic or that stupid intern you just hired. The larger the company the more likely a violation will have occurred. Most of the time people actually think they are not breaking any rules. Software vendors all have different copy rules.

Some for example state that you can X copies running at a time. This allows you to install the product everywhere but only run X number. While other are node locked meaning you ca

Ha! I know what you mean. I used to be quite frank in my job interviews, and although it usually caused a positive reaction, sometimes it backfired on me. I once told a developer in an interview that his proposed technical solution was just half-way to completely solve all of his problems and I offered an alternative solution. Obviously, I didn't get the job. Whatever, I got a much better one, in the interview, once again, I was frank (without being as aggressive:P ), and instead of rotting in a cubicle I

If you're stupid enough to admit you turned in your last company for software piracy during an interview, you might want to consider these interviewing tips:

1. Leave out the part about banging your secretary in the closet at the Christmas party. (This is a true story, an executive of a company I used to work for did this and was fired the next work day).2. Don't mention how you hacked in and read others' emails.3. Don't mention your recent discovery of youporn.4. Don't mention that you are a scratch go

As their IT consultant it's my job to make sure I'm not doing things which could land them in trouble. Incredibly, most aren't aware that I can't just install this one purchased copy everywhere they like.:)

You shouldn't be surprised, because typically these bounties state that you get some percentage of the money collected as damages through a court, but most cases are never reach that state, they're settled out of court. The idea that you can "turn someone in and become rich" is but a dream; in all likelihood you'll never see a dime. You'll just be that guy.

You're a rather sad person, I think. Snitching on a company or two, for something serious, may or may not be justified. I'd have to judge each case on it's own merits. But, snitching on ALL of your employers? That's just low. You admit that you are digging for something with which to punish them when you are gone. In effect, you have little value to a company, you know that you'll be terminated sooner or later, so you're actively searching for a way to punish them from the day you start.
You should c

The HUGE reward was that I moved on, while that small company continued to fail, and actually tried to bribe Government investigators, as to their contract qualifications! They cheated 49 staff employees out of pay, intimidated everyone, and stole works from legitimate competitors.
Glad they are gone from this classified government contracting arena, they won't be missed. I still wonder if they were on the payroll of foreign governments who are enemies to free countries. Well, my work there was done, an

I used to work with an "IT Professional" that had previously worked for the Geek Squad while he was in school. He bragged about all the money he got turning people in for illegal copies of Windows/Office. Microsoft would give him $100 for everyone he turned in and then call/threaten the person in question into buying a full copy of their software. I mentioned the fact that a lot of these people were probably totally unaware that someone had put illegal copies of windows on their computer (if they had the te

In company's some of it is poor paper work that makes some of the software illegal copies other it's PHB that have no idea or cheap higher ups that will not take that you can not have that software on there systems with out having to pay for it. Other times some taking a high cost piece of software and useing one copy for the full office.

75% of all reports come from IT staff or managers, 11% from the company's senior management and 4% from outside consultants. More than 59% of those reporting are no longer employed by the target company.

It sounds to me like 75% of the reports come from the people who probably installed the software in the first place, and most of them made the report after they were fired or quit.

is to never use anything but FOSS. Yes I know there will be those who respond, "But I work for a specialized X company doing Y and we have to use specialized software Z that only runs on Windows. Therefore, there is no way we could ever switch to FOSS." And that describes exactly 1% of all companies in the world.

The vast majority of companies use a browser, a file server, word processor, spreadsheet, and email. Those problems were solved by FOSS long, long ago.

The problem is that lots of companies use some special software program that their business basically depends on. For instance, tons of dentist offices depend on Dentrix these days. Many other places use special accounting software. Sure, most of their other needs could be satisfied just fine with Ubuntu Linux, Firefox, and LibreOffice 3.3, but there's always that one special app that only runs on Windows. Because of that, that means they have to run Windows OS for all the employees who need that app.Of

Better to be honest, and then those you piss off wont be able to drop you in it. It's not like anyone should be running a business thinking, I'll defraud a few companies and I'll get away with it because all my employees love me and it will be that way forever!;)

BULLSHIT Airdorn. Have you ever been in some of these shops? Let me tell you how it works: They expect YOU to spend all day installing hot software which they will then blame YOU if anybody catches them on it. Does it seem like there is any upside for YOU? Nope, not a bit.

Hell I even had an interview that went like this: Owner "It says here you know how to setup Windows and Linux servers, is that right?" Me- yes sir not a problem. Owner "Can you set up a Windows machine so it updates from our server instead

Good so copying isn't stealing which means I can lock up GPL code in my apps and you're totally cool with that, right? It is just copying some bits, fuck the GPL!

Oh but you don't like that do you? Well I hate to break the news to ya but whether GPL or proprietary you are STILL ripping someone off.

And lets be honest MR Coward, your "solutions" suck except for a couple of little niches like web servers. Where is my FOSS QuickBooks? Where is my FOSS PhotoShop? Where is my FOSS version of the 50 million special

Ow wow, a Linux fanboi doesn't have the fucking common sense to read what he is posting to and spews bullshit! Surprise surprise. In case you didn't bother to read the parent post, which is obvious either you didn't or just didn't have enough cells to comprehend, let me break it down for you: Mr Coward wrote that if a company for whatever reason wouldn't take a "FOSS solution" he would "stick it to the man" by giving them hot Windows and illegal software, and then went on a rant about how copying isn't stea

As I have said in the previous message, I am all for protecting Microsoft from "pirates" who are now the driving force behind its popularity AND are a major source of continuing idiotic demands to make all software mimic Microsoft.

Just don't pick and choose -- if Microsoft wants to protect itself from "piracy", we will make sure that it's protected from all piracy, including repair shops and home users who spread Microsoft disease.

Yeah. When you hire someone, you want to know that they are at least dependable in a general sense. If they have a history of selling out their employers; that shows they are willing to turn on you if you piss them off. Odds are that these people were offended by their bosses in some way just before they reported on them; which is why they no longer work there... they were fired or quit.

The buck stops at the top. Only when a corporation has paid someone off in some way can they get away with blaming an individual employee in that way. A CEO or CFO, etc. are supposed to know that all "tools" used are not stolen, pirated, etc.